What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

How can you know what you want
Till you get what you want
And you see if you like it?
— Steven Sondheim, Into the Woods

We had some good friends over for dinner the other night. While we waited for the roast to finish, Wayne and I took the air on the back porch. We talked about work. I told him that this is a slow time of year at the box factory.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s slow for us at the dealership, too. The last three weeks have been awful.” Wayne works for a local car dealership. He recently moved from sales to finance. He’s the hardest worker I know, often putting in six ten-hour (or twelve-hour!) days in a single week.

We sat silent for a few moments. Wayne took a draw on his cigarette. I sipped my wine. At last he said, “You know, I don’t hate my job, but I don’t love it either. It’s just not what I want to be doing. It’s not my life, you know?”

“What do you want to be doing?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d really like to open a cigar shop or a wine bar or something like that.”

“Do it,” I said.

“I can’t,” he said. “My family wouldn’t approve.” His extended family is very religious, and they frown upon smoking and drinking. “I’ve also thought about starting a winery, or at least going to work for one.”

“That seems like a good fit,” I said. “You like wine. You know a lot about it. You’re excellent with people. But…”

“But my family wouldn’t like that, either. The thing is, I make good money at the dealership. I like my boss. It’s a good job. But it’s not meaningful. I feel unfulfilled.”

We shivered in the cold November air. We looked at the stars. “It’s strange,” I said at last. “It seems that a lot of people reach their mid- to late-thirties and need a career change. They want to do something different. Or they wake up one day and realize that they have a certain skillset, maybe from a hobby or something, and that they could make money doing something they loved.”

“That’s kind of what you’re doing, right?” asked Wayne.

“Kind of,” I said. “I’ve always loved to write. On a whim I started to write about personal finance. I was surprised to discover I was good at it, that I could help people.”

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“I love it. I feel called to it. It’s what I want to do. I’m not giving up my day job yet, though my day job is unfulfilling, too. I don’t like my work at the box factory. But that job gives me unexpected benefits, like the time to spend writing. That job also pays the bills while I find my way with this.”

Wayne lit another cigarette while I told him about my friend P., who wants to start a bike-fitting business. “I think the key is to find something you love and to do it,” I said.

“But how can you know what you would love to do?” he asked. “How can you find that?”

“That’s a good question,” I said. “I don’t have a good answer. If you had told me a year ago that my vocation was to write a personal finance web site, I would have laughed. The idea would have seemed absurd. I think the key is to be open to new ideas. To be in a state of readiness. You want to be receptive to even the oddest thing that might come your way.”

Wayne nodded.

“You want to be able to recognize an opportunity when it appears,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Wayne. Just then, Kris called us inside to dinner.

Wayne and I never did finish our conversation. In a way, it feels like the continuation of a discussion I had last week with my friend AJ. She, too, is in her mid-thirties, and at a place in her life where she’s not sure which direction to go.

I just started a new job and I feel a little underwhelmed. I’m 21, and my whole life seems to have been leading up to this point, where I have a good job with a good salary. I feel like I don’t know what else to look forward to since in high school you look forward to going to college, and college you look ahead towards a job. It is probably still too new to judge how exciting this job will be since I have just barely started but how did you feel when you got your first real-world job?

I’m 25 years old and for the past 26 months I’ve been working at a job that’s extremely unfulfilling.

I’m typing this from my desk right now.

I’d go as far as to say I hate it. I am much too qualified to be doing the mind numbing tasks I do. But did it for 2 years to pay off some debt and have a simeple lifestyle.

3 weeks ago I decided that I will leave for good to try and start my own business and try to do what I actually enjoy.

So after Christmas I’ll be on my own. New year, new beginning.

I’m leaving behind a steady (although not large) pay check and some health benefits to go and try to be my own boss and do something I enjoy rather than cringe every morning at the alarm and proceed like a zombie through a day of frustration and anger and emptyness.

I figure no better time than now at 25 with no mortgage, no kids….if I stayed at this job I know I’d always regret not trying….

Find it when you are young. I am not young and have that same or similar feeling: not hating it but not liking it much either. Pays bills and health insurance. Find your passion while you are young… Good Luck..

Wow, that story totally fits in where I am in my life now. I’ll be 30 in a few months and for the past couple of years, I’ve been experiencing the same questions and concerns with my current job. Not bad, but not fulfilling. It pays well and supports us as we’re getting ready to have our first child. So I fear things are only going to get tougher on me “experimenting” if you know what I mean.

The good thing is I don’t HATE it yet. It’s flexible enough to where it enables me to have time and resources to pursue other paths. Now if I could only narrow down WHAT potential career paths I wanted to investigate! I just know that there’s something more I want to be doing with the “work” side of my life. And man, I really want to find it!

I’m no expert, I’m still a student, I’ve had a couple of jobs already, but I felt I ought to share a pearl of wisdom from a seminar I had earlier in the year. Aparrantly, in the UK at least, my generation will likely change careers up to seven times before finding “the one”. I’m not sure whether that means you need work harder to find the one you want in the first instance, or whether you should just go with the flow and see where life takes you?

Ah, but what if you hate your career choice and, despite having thunk on it for years and years, have never found something that you do want to do? In that case it would be foolish to leave the current well-paying job.

I’m 32 and this was my conversation with my fiance yesterday – almost verbatim. Thanks for sharing. It’s good to hear that I’m not the only one. Intellectually I know I can’t be the only one, but it’s good to actually see/hear someone else say it.

I think a lot of us are in the same position, and it has a lot to do with the clarity you evaluate yourself and what’s around.
Yourself first: try to assess what you’re good at and where you need help. Clearly identify your passion(s).
What’s around: are there opportunities (market, job openings, big cash income…)?
If it looks good, consider the timing and go for it.

IMHO, It’s definitely easier when you come from a wealthy family (no wonder so many artists come from rich backgrounds), but not impossible otherwise. Maybe a little more planning is required because a screw-up can be more damageable.

Good luck to all of you, I’m EXACTLY in the same phase. I’m 27, have enough diplomas for me and a dog, but want something more than the average career available for my type of education. So screw it, I’d rather be a happy loser than a frustrated golden boy.

I went through some of this in the last few years (I’m 29) – I’m a scientist, so plenty of education, but about a year ago I really hated going to work everyday. I went to career counseling and it was the best thing for me – I realized I didn’t hate science (I love it) but I hated most of the everyday things I did as a hands-on researcher. I also identified the tasks I really enjoy doing – and was able to find a job (been here six months so far) where I manage large research projects – so I am still in on the science but get to do more of the “big picture” stuff, which I vastly prefer to the individual experiments.

I’m just trying to point out that sometimes it’s not the career that’s the problem as much as the job – and if you do some homework on yourself, identifying the aspects of your job that you love/hate, you will be better suited to finding a job that you actually love, or positioning yourself for a promotion to that job. I was lucky enough to work at a large university where career counseling was actually free, but there are also some great books out there if you can’t afford to go see someone.

Knowing yourself is one of the biggest challenges in a job search – and even though some of the exercises may seem silly, or obvious, in my experience they can be quite revealing (for example in my case I didn’t previously realize how much I preferred public speaking to writing – leading me to avoid jobs that emphasized writing).

I’m almost 40 years old and I still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up. I always admired people who had such drive and direction–where they KNEW what they wanted in a career. I can’t say I’m unhappy because I’m in a position now where it’s OK, but I took a lot of twists and turns just to get to this point. “Putting Time In” for a job I hated never fit well with me . I still keep my eyes open, never know what opportunity is waiting.

I feel as though I’ve been blessed in this area. I happened to stumble upon computer programming in my early 20′s at the perfect time : my soon-to-be wife was expecting. I had been working at a Supermarket and hated it.

I’m 23, and on my second “real” job. Pretty good salary for my age, etc, etc. Since I was in elementary school I’ve played with computers. I then went to college for computer science, and now work at a software company. I hate it; I wasn’t even this miserable working behind the counter at a local drug store..

I feel very lucky as I’m 26 and have found a job that I love. On vacations I relax but still miss being at work.

Those times when I had so called “boring jobs” (mail clerk) I still found them wonderfully rewarding. It’s all about changing your mindset to fit the situation. If you can’t change the world change yourself.

I think people need to remind themselves that thinking about what they want to be or do for the rest of their life isn’t just for the young. If you’re in your forties, fifties or sixties, there is no better time than the present to pursue what it is you were meant to do or be.

Everyone was created for a purpose. Our responsibility is to find out what that purpose is and only then will we find fulfillment in our lives. Thomas Edison once said, “the secret of success is focus of purpose.”

Most people live their lives with the “I’ll be happy when..” mentality. You remember don’t you? In grade school, I’ll be happy when I get to high school. In high school, I’ll be happy when I get to college. In college, I’ll be happy when I get that job. And so on.

You cannot make a career decision based on solely money. There has to be meaning, purpose, and accomplishment.

The key is to plan your work around your life, rather than planning your life around your work.

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
–Viktor Frankl

This is a quick update on my discussion with JD regarding my bike fitting adventure.

The greatest part of proceeding towards doing a job that maybe interesting and fulfilling has been the mental barriers that I have hand to set aside. By lifting the blinders to my own possibilities, strengths and desires I have the opportunity to take charge of other aspects of my working life.

The initial steps to starting my business are not on the schedule I initially thought. This is due to the other players involved and that is the reality that I have had to come to terms with. By moving forward I have challenged myself to write a business plan which is 90% complete. Most of the micro-business people I know haven’t done a business plan at all. Writing a business plan became a necessary step in my process.

I am currently trying to utilize a paid consultant to help me with the potential Profit/Loss statement for my business. This was an unexpected step based on the initial discussion with the other player involved in my plan. I recognized that I could haphazardly throw some numbers to this player, but that is not how I want to run my business. I feel it is best to understand my strengths and weaknesses. This will allow me to do well in the areas that I know best and use other resources to make my weaknesses an asset. I am willing to find or pay for resources that provide quality to my business plan. Therefore I am working hard on affording a consultant on a part of this project.

Based on this work on my new business I have a new perspective on my current job. This has led to me propose a wholly different position for myself in my office. Since I do not have my new business up and running and that I would not be leaving my day job even after the initial start up, I have taken progressive steps to make this current position more fulfilling and interesting. The meeting with my boss was very positive. However, due to my proposal being a radical departure from the norm, it is not a foregone conclusion that the boss with make the change. I can accept this because I have now experienced this type of lack of control with my business plan.

I do not know what I will be doing in the next month. My business plan could be crashing and burning as I type this comment or taking the most progressive step to date and all outside of my control. My current job may be the same in a month or I could be entirely reclassified. By taking the challenge to be fulfilled and doing something interesting I feel confident, self assured and comfortable not knowing what the future has in store for me. These feelings make this experience the greatest.

It helps that I will be in Thailand for a month of vacation due to having a Get Rich Slowly mantra while all of this all goes down. My partner and I have paid off over $10,000 of consumer debt in 18 months and afford this trip on a combined income of $62,000. Though, we could have done a better job paying of the debt and paying for the trip, I am very satisfied with Get Rich Slowly.

[...] J.D.’s post today at Get Rich Slowly highlighted a conversation he had with a friend about their jobs and how much they hate them. Much of the conversation dealt with his friend Wayne’s outlook on his job, how he felt limited to work that made other people happy or not upset. [...]

I’m not even in my mid-thirties and I’ve had that kind of conversation with my fiance and some close friends. The other thing that you need to consider is the risk involved; many people shy away from any risks because they feel they’re beyond their control.

I stayed at a job I didn’t like because I was worried about the 2-3 week gap in salary between pays. I was there for years because of something insignificant. I’m no longer willing to accept that and I’m willing to consider things that might not pay as well as long as I’m more fulfilled.

Worse comes to worse; construction pays well and they’re always looking for people.

It’s good to know that people older than me feel the same way that I feel. So many of my peers know what they want, have an identifying label of what they do (not that I want a label, but you know what I mean.), and I don’t really have one.

I’m fast approaching this category of people who reach their mid 30s and realize that they have been doing something that they no longer want to do. They only went into it because of decent career prospects and social acceptance of the job. Now that things have changed, the job’s appeal has gone down too.

I try to fill this gap by writing make money online blogs. Visit for review and comment!

Well, i’m glad that i’m not the only one who’s been thinking about this.

I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching lately and i’ve decided that whoever said “if you do a job you love, then you’ll never work a day in your life” was absolutely full of it. I’ve used computers my whole life and i’ve been a computer programmer for the last 4 to 5 years… and I hate it (i’m 25 now).

A small piece of advice from the other side is this:

When you’re forced to do something for 40 hours a week to make a living then you’re not going to enjoy it. Nothing takes the pleasure out of what you enjoy doing than not having the choice to do it.

The best job I ever had was pumping gas while I was studying. It was brainless, dead end, and put me out in the cold… but do you know what? That was one of the happiest times of my life. I would go to a stress free job and then get to go home and indulge in my hobby of messing with computers. Such a simple thing really. Perhaps, that’s the secret for some people, to keep your hobby a hobby and cut back on your working hours. If anybody says that it’s not that simple then remember that this is a blog on living frugally

As for the reason that people don’t enjoy their careers when they get to their 30′s. Well that’s easy:

It’s because you’re working a career that an 18 year old decided for you.

Hope somebody finds some of what I wrote useful, this is a topic close to my heart.

I’m in a slightly similar yet different position. I’m a mid-20s graduate student in the sciences. Simply put, graduate school is so awful, I have no interest in continuing what I’m doing once I get my PhD. I’ll never make back the lost wages from going the academic route (no one goes to grad school for the money). And now I’m banking on my PhD to get my hopeful employers to say “Well, he’s got a PhD, he should be intelligent and hard-working enough to work in _____” where _____ is something different from what I’ve been doing the past 4-odd years. It seems that at least 50% of the graduate students I know in the sciences feel the same way.
Am I going to be out-of-luck? I guess I’ll find out in a year or so…

I’ve gotten into a situation where I do something I like in a field I love. I’m a musician but I have a long background in technology. I found a great job in IT working for a symphony orchestra. It’s not THE job, but it has given me several extravocational opportunities that I never would have found otherwise.

AJ, aka, the friend who lamented that she doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows upsays:

27 November 2006 at 9:09 pm

One of the good things about reaching my mid-thirties is finally feeling “adult” enough to take myself seriously and give myself permission to take an honest look at how I want to live my life. I’ve been lucky in my work, even the low-wage jobs I’ve held (bookseller/buyer) have been interesting. It isn’t so much that I don’t like the work I’ve undertaken as an editor/writer/researcher, it is that I am now in a place where I want more creative control over the work I do. What that entails though, I’m not sure.

I’ve come to realize that I’ve pushed aside most of the creative apsects of my work and cut myself off from many of my interests and talents simply because they didn’t fit the “professional” mold I was aiming for. Well, I’ve been there and done that, and it ain’t all that it promises to be.

I’ve also had a tortuos affair with “art”. Somewhere along the way I got it into my mind that I can’t be an artist, don’t have what it takes, or the right personality, etc. Yet, it is the act of creation (photos, fiber arts, food, gardens, interiors, etc.) that gets my blood pumping more than anything. This is what I am trying to be open to, to listen to.

I’m 59! And while I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, I’ve become comfortable with the idea that maybe I never will know.

I switched careers in my 30s, leaving graphic arts to get an MBA, and entered the corporate world in New York. After 1 1/2 years there, I was posted to Amsterdam. The job was okay, the money was good but looking back I realized the job was completely overshadowed by living overseas and getting to travel all over the place for work.

After 12 years and 4 moves, my job was eliminated and as I told my husband at the time, “it feels like I graduated without having to take my last final…” In other words I was burnt out but didn’t realize it until I was set free.

I received “outplacement services” and became the poster child for a bad attitude because I knew I didn’t want another corporate job but I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

Along the way I’ve worked in a bookstore, owned a bookstore, been a “financial planner” (read salesperson; the worst of the lot for me), worked for a lawyer, been Exec. Dir. of a small chamber of commerce, and been a tour manager for educational travel programs and an assistant manager at Starbucks.

As a result of living overseas and the tour manager job, I have already been to a lot of the places people dream of and save for. I would love to travel more; can’t get enough, really, but if I die tomorrow I won’t regret places not seen.

At some point I realized my lifelong “obsession” with makeup, fashion and style deserved more attention than I had given it so I’m now selling Origins cosmetics at Macy’s while I still work part-time at a nearby Sbux. I also write two columns a week for the local paper.

I’m thinking the writing and the fashion/style passion will eventually come together in a blog or a book but right now I don’t have a plan.

Luckily I have plenty of stamina. I’ve found I love this more physical work and I love dealing with the public.

For perspective, I’m the main breadwinner; my husband’s retired but his social security accounts for less than 20% of our income.

Am I rich? No. Am I using my MBA? Not really. Am I having fun? yes yes yes. My husband and I live frugally but not meagerly; our cars are old but paid for; our house, a 130-year old Victorian, will probably be our retirement, although we aren’t completely resourceless in that department. We married late so there are no kids to worry about.

My way is not for everybody but I encourage you to factor fun into your choices.

Well, I’m only in my mid-twenties so maybe I shouldn’t comment but I will anyway.

I work for a large transport and engineering consultancy, I stumbled into my job by accident and I find it fascinating. But, I’m hoping not to do it forever, I think I might enjoy being a librarian at some point, and I’d love to do a PhD in the study of religions later on as well.

I think its ok not to like your job even if its what you trained for. If it makes you miserable, then try to move on. If you can put up with it and get fulfillment elsewhere then hey, maybe you are ok staying where you are.

Making your life happen (as opposed to letting life happen to you) is challenging and in fact not always possible. I had big plans when I was in my teens and early 20s, but then things happened: I met someone, got married, made compromises, etc., and I never did end up pursuing those dreams. But I don’t regret it. One of the big lessons I’ve learned is that you can make almost any job or career fulfilling if you throw yourself into it with all your heart. I spent several years working as a dishwasher and enjoyed that almost as much as the white-collar jobs I’ve had since then (writer, editor, contract negotiator for an Ivy League university, expedition coordinator, environmental educator, consultant). In many ways, working within the constraints imposed on you by a job–no matter how menial–offers creative challenges that can equal any you might have as an entrepreneur, artist, or any other stereotypically creative endeavor.

For most of my life I’ve been a “grass is always greener” kind of guy…working in one job but pining for something else. I still have those tendencies but have learned to keep them at bay by forcing myself to dig in and do the best I can at the job I have now, finding the fulfillment that lies within and milking it for all it’s worth. I’ve been at my current job for 10 years now, the longest by far that I’ve ever stayed in a job, and while much of it is tedious and I struggle with burnout, I also have been able to experience the benefits that come with sticking with a job long enough to become really good at it.

It’s interesting. I did a lot of factory work jobs when younger. I enjoyed them, but felt like I could be doing more. So I went back to school in my 40s and wound up in tech support at the start of the tech bubble. Got to get a lot of paid training that I never got a chance to use but the travelling was fun. Spent 13 months out of work when the bubble burst. I’m still doing tech support but the pay is not good. And mostly, I’m tired of the amount of stuff I’m required to know and support for that pay. I’m getting tired of thinking like a machine. Mid-50s is not a good time for a career change, unless you go into business for yourself. Somehow, I’ve never quite had that opportunity.

There are days I wish I could work in a factory again, with time to think. It’s nice if you have a job you love but they are few and far between.

It’s been really interesting reading all these entries. I’m 28 years-old and could identify with the article.
Seems like I began questioning my career path while I was still in college, but I followed my parents’ advice and majored in something practicle, so that I’d be able to find a good-paying job after graduation.
About a year into it, I decided to leave and try volunteer work. I really enjoyed the volunteer work, but of course it didn’t pay enough.
Over the next couple years I tried a few other job, like construction, teaching, tutoring, etc.
Eventually I landed where I am today, in technical consulting. I knew nothing about it when I interviewed, but apparently they must have seen something in me.
I’ve been working here for over a year, and it’s been a great learning opportunity. Maybe it’s because I’ve never stayed at a job for much over a year before this, but I’ve always looked at each new job as a new opportunity to learn and grow. I try to avoid staying at a place once the work gets stagnant and boring.
The key for me has been to look for new opportunities and also to try and vary my work, so that I’m not doing the same thing for too long.
Eventually I will probably move on to something else. I want to follow my passions. You know, find something that I love, and then find a way to get paid for it. I think that if I’m doing something I really enjoy, then I won’t mind putting the extra effort into it.
And while this job pays the bills and teaches me new things, it’s hard to get too excited about it, because it’s not my vocation.
Still, I just try to stay positive and focused on my goals. I believe that if you dream of something and want it bad enough, that you can achieve it. Sounds a little hokey, I know, but at least if you are goal-oriented and focused, you should be able to improve your quality of life by a little bit, even if you never completely achieve these goals.
Some people give up, saying that a job is a job, and hard work is not supposed to be fun. But if you think of all the hours we spend at work each day, then it’s really a waste if you just spend the day doing something you don’t enjoy. I think we’re put on this earth to live our lives to the fullest and find our vocations.
So, don’t give up! Keep dreaming and keep searching.

I think I must be a bit of a late developer, and definitely didn’t choose my career in nursing which has been intermittently fulfilling, (and intermittently awful!). But what it has provided is a means to an end. My life is not just my work – my work enables me to live the life I want. I should add here that I spent my teens and twenties reading John & Sally Seymour books on self sufficiency and dreaming of my cottage in the country – which was completely out of my reach on a nurse’s wages in the area I lived in Britain!
I drifted into nursing by chance, first psychiatric nursing, then general. I enjoyed it initially and was very involved and driven to achieve. I bought a house, got promoted and had fulfilled my ambitions. Then came Thatchers Britain, cutbacks, staff shortages and burnout. At the age of 39 I decided to ‘run away from home’ and emigrated to Australia.
Same job – different circumstances – it was enjoyable again. I worked in cities, outback towns and remote Aboriginal communities – where I had a small bout of burnout again! But I had decided to make my life permanently in Australia, sold my house in Britain, and bought a wonderful house on 3/4 of an acre in a country town. At this stage I had a hankering to simplify my life and decided to become debt free. I had finished my house renovations and had my mortgage down to $50,000. I had an untaxing job in the local small hospital, could basically choose my hours and was planning to garden myself into senility!
Because of my frugal lifestyle, and a bit of good luck, I found a very reasonably priced small cottage on 10 acres at a bargain price and spent a year renovating it and then sold my house in town.
I was left with a $43,000 HELOC and paid that off in July, in 19 months. I am aiming for an emergency fund of $15,000 by Christmas and in the New Year I will be cutting down my work hours to 30/fortnight – 3 nights only – which will be quite adequate to live well with my frugal lifestyle. That will give me 11 days/fortnight off to plant a Permaculture property and do a few other things I have planned.
I suppose the point of this lengthy comment is to reassure those people who don’t know what they want to be when they grow up – let the current job you have be a means to an end, not an end in itself. Plan, scheme, set goals – and be prepared to adapt and change those goals as your circumstances change. I have always thought I have ‘drifted’ through life – the only life changing decision I have ever made was to come to Australia – the rest has just evolved/happened but I seem, at the age of 55, to have ended up exactly where I wanted to be 30 years ago!

When I grew up, I wanted to do for others. I still feel that way now that I’m grown. It has served to allow me to not only develop in a personal moral nature, but also in a financial nature. You see, I wished to aid others by sharing my knowledge and skills, yet one of my skills was having the ability to memorize and judge fair pricing. So, I took my fair pricing skill, and slowly sold others my other skills.

Funny thing was, I had valuable skills, but did not start a business with them, and instead stayed in my ;pw end job. Out of curiosity, I stopped into a new business on my way home, the owner/worker had really no knowledge of the skills and products he was selling. I stepped forward during my off duty hours and helped him learn the trade. Without my help, his business would have failed within the first month. He learned to trust me, I learned to trust him, and we both found ways to aid each other. Now I’m his supplier, and clear about 250% a year return on my investments.

The point I’m making is that if you wish to be truly successful, then first you must have the burning desire to help others. If you have that desire, then other’s will come, and success will follow.

In closing, I would like to add that financial success isn’t easy. That burning desire to help has to be strong enough to make you spend twice as much effort as those around you. Count on working till you drop, and giving more than receiving. Count on paying your investments before you pay your own pocket.

i want to be a lawyer when i grew up because i love to help people solve their problems in court. lawyers are awsome. my cousin and i both want to be a lawyer. we might be working together. some people might want to be other things because they think that lawyers are stupi. but in order to be a good lawyer you have to be good at finding facts in a book.and in order to work as a lawyer, you have to have a license from the state telling whether you are working as a lawyer. the reason i know that is because at ma school we are talking about careers and jobs. we all had to pick what we wanted to be and the fun part of it we had to interview someone in our family and we had to ask them some questions.bye

[...] If you’re new here, you may want to learn what this site is about. I encourage you to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!One recurring theme of personal finance books is that it’s easier to accumulate wealth by working for yourself than by working for others. Many have heard this maxim, but few have heeded it. Some want to, but don’t know how to begin. [...]

What I don’t understand is how are you suppose to put your self out there and play the field when no one will give you a chance? What I’ve been having a problem with at least hear in Florrida is no one will hire you if you don’t have experience even if you have had some schooling. Either your too qualified,not qualified enough, or simply employers don’t have the time to train you. It’s like you have to know someone who know’s someone to just get your foot in the door to start at the bottom and even that doesn’t seem to work. All I know is residential/commercial painting which I feel is mind numbing work. I didn’t even want to get into this field thanks to an ex-husband. Now what?

[...] you to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Last fall I wrote an entry entitled “What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?” I described how it’s difficult to know what you want to do when you’re 21. (And [...]

INterestingly I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I grew up: I always ALWAS knew I wanted to help people, and to try to leave the world a little better off than when I found it.

I think whenever someone is asked or asks themselves what they want to be when they grow up, the invariably, and perhaps incorrectly begin trying to identify jobs rather than values. My desire to help people led me down a path that included brief stints trying to get into medicine, law, forensic science, psychology, and finally finance.

But through it all, I always had the solid base of knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up – helpful to others, useful, a good person. I think we have to answer this questions with values, rather than job descriptions. If you follow your values you’ll eventually end up someplace that suits you.

Wow, so this feeling is just part of growing up then. I just turned 36 and I feel its time to do what I love. Just, what is it that I love and will provide for my family? Hmmm… The long unanswered question.

I find it so interesting that in this country we are all so dissatisfied with our work with such an emphasis on “finding our bliss” (thank you Joseph Campbell!).
How many countries do people have absolutely NO CHOICES and are dirt poor and would give their left arm for the opportunity to work any one of our “dissatisfying” jobs?!
I have no problem with doing what you love and getting paid for it- but I do have a problem with constant discontent in the land of plenty.
This could be former socialist Russia where we are told what we will be, and none of us would ever have to think about it…
Maybe we just need to choose to be happy in life. Period.

That one question was life’s first lesson regarding the importance of semantics as well as as foreshadowing of how convulted the workplace would prove to be.

Silly me, but in my heart, soul, and intellect, my answer then, as it is now, was to answer the question that was asked. I.E., I wanted only to “grow up” to BE a decent, kind person. After that, well, working and paying bills was just something that was supposed to take care of itself.

Little did I know, however, that they were NOT asking about a state of “being,” but rather my plans on what I wanted to DO in order to earn money.

Choosing nothing specific left me living by default, you might say, working at whatever employment came my way.

No real regrets, mind you, but with nearly sixty employers in my past, what once was a mild amusement at the semantics involved has grown into a total contempt for employers and the disenguous manner in which they treat people these days.

Truth? It started with that question which in no way meant what was said, and it found its completion by referring to employees as “human resources”. Yes, we are now “resources” first with our “humanity” coming in a far distant second-place. We’ve been dehumanized, employment has become exploitation, and still people continue to perpetuate the myth of a “work ethic”.

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